Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Who Is The Hillary Clinton Of Law Firms?


"The New York Observer has answered a burning political question that never occurred to us, at least until now: 'If the major presidential candidates were top New York law firms, which ones would they be?'
Lawyers in New York — perhaps enjoying a bit more idle time than usual these days — energetically took up the question, offering all kinds of suggestions and nominations, David Lat wrote. Lawyers nationwide have showered Hillary Clinton with more campaign contributions than any other candidate, federal records show.

After some debate, Mr. Lat declared Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison the closest match for Mrs. Clinton. Why Paul Weiss? One anonymous lawyer at the firm suggested that, like the candidate, the firm had a reputation for being a bit, well, hard-driving. (The lawyer actually used a more colorful phrase.)"


http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/who-is-the-obama-of-law-firms/

Other similarities pop into mind. Paul Weiss and Hillary both have a long history of union busting. We all know what happened to dozens of contract attorneys at Paul Weiss when they complained to the media about their dangerous and unsanitary working conditions. Similarly, Hillary sat quiet on the board of Walmart during its heyday of union busting and outsourcing, when workers were terrorized and their rights were trampled upon.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yuZhwV24PmM/

Clinton also voted for the credit card company-supported bankruptcy bill, a provision which undoubtedly helped Youngwood keep dozens of young JD's trapped within his cockroach-ridden gulag.

By donating money to her primary campaign, Alfred Youngwood certainly supports Hillary. Will you?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you read on in that same article,

"Many lawyers pitched their employers as the Barack Obama of law firms, but Mr. Lat gave that title to Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, a relatively young business-litigation firm where, according to a recent article in The New York Times, “flip-flops are acceptable footwear.”

Yes, and they operate horrible sweatshops, too! I believe they are on the sweatshop list....

I'm thinking more about John Edwards and his theme of "two Americas"...seems appropriate here. Flip flop wearing associates managing temp workers slaving away in dungeons...

Anonymous said...

This place sounds interesting - anyone hear of them before? Custom Legal Solutions provides the following benefits for its employees:

Competitive pay
Group Health Plan
401 K Program
Free Checking
Employee Referral Bonuses
24/7 accessibility
Liability and worker compensation insurance
E-Office (ability to access employee records on-line)

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Anonymous said...

Quinn and it's flip-flops weren't the problem on that project. EP Dine was.

If EP Dine didn't lie to the temps by intentionally telling them the project was 60 hrs per week with OT when it was only 40 hrs per week until Quinn got an idea of who was good and who was a shmuck, then that project would've been hassle-free. (And we know that many temps are shmucks. Wise move on Quinn's part.)

EP Dine lied in order to get people in the door. They know from experience how tough it is to staff no-OT projects (NONE of their projects pay OT), and this was a lucrative, long-term project (it's still going on, albeit under Lexolution's sweatshop conditions now).

They needed to staff it quickly and figured that once they had people in the door, they'd stick around until approved for OT, banking on temps' aversion to "burning bridges" with agencies by leaving projects early.

So blame EP Dine.

Anonymous said...

dead, dead, dead...someday we'll all be dead.

Anonymous said...

To describe Barack Obama as a "top New York law firm" is stupid. Barack Obama forewent the chance to work at a big firm and instead went to work for a civil rights firm in Chicago.

This law-firm self-aggrandizement is disgusting. None of them are good enough to be Barack Obama. Sorry.

Anonymous said...

What, do you mean the NYT is puerile and irrelevant? Are you accusing the "Gray Lady" of trivializing important national politicians and voters' decisions?

NYT is just garbage these days. It used to be a substantive, objective news organization, now it's a bunch of celebrity reporters and incompetent plagiarists (e.g Jayson Blair) and those with obvious agendas.

It's amazing how fast and hard the NYT has fallen in one generation. It's completely irrelevant now, just a mouthpiece for whatever politician or cause their editorial board finds fashionable. They have no standards whatsoever.

Anonymous said...

From http://www.tribuneindia.com/2008/20080130/jobs1.htm

Quislex, an LPO firm with a team of 130 lawyers in Hyderabad, last year entered into a joint venture with local contract attorney agency Strategic Legal Solutions, which is providing the US legal industry both offshore and onshore outsourcing options together.

The NYLJ article quoted Quislex CEO Ram Vasudevan as saying that the US contract lawyers might be better suited for some jobs. "There can be parallel teams working in the US and India. There are no hard-and-fast rules." Vasudevan said.

NYLJ noted that the Indian LPOs also have to spend considerably on infrastructure such as office and computers.

"Aside from office space and computers, the leading companies also have US-trained lawyers working in both India and the US to supervise the work of the Indian staff. They also maintain client development teams to market services to the US companies," the journal said.

In order to maintain their cost-effective edge amid growing competition, the LPOs are now turning away from metro cities such as Mumbai, where real estate costs could be as high as in the US cities and are rather shifting towards small cities like Pune.

The report quoted another major LPO NewGalexy's Managing Director Robert Glennie as saying that operating in smaller cities was the only way to meet the US and European clients' expectation on costs and service. "You can't do that in a major Indian city anymore," he said. — PTI